Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Pythons caught fighting for mating rights

The strength of two male carpet pythons was on display last week as they fought, initially hanging from the roof of a home in south-east Queensland, Australia, battling it out for the affections of a nearby female.
Snake catcher Max Jackson said it was an amazing display of strength that indicated the start of breeding season.

"Most snakes, particularly pythons, begin to move around a bit more to search for females at the start of breeding season," he said.
"When two males cross paths during this time, it is common for them to have combat, it is pretty gentle, just wrestling, it is a simple matter of overpowering the other one. This is a particularly impressive one
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"They were using so much stretch using their tails to hang there." Mr Gilbert said that a female was probably relatively close by.
"The female puts out a pheromone trail and the male follows the trail," he said.
Mr Jackson said it was easy to tell the pythons, who he estimated weighed about 15 kilograms each, were males fighting because of how much they were moving around.

"You can tell they are two males - when they mate they don't twist away like they are," he said.
"When two snakes mate, they can crawl up each other.
They can stay still for up to two days, it is a pretty minimal movement for that period of time.
There is lots of effort going into this."
Mr Jackson said he had never seen footage like it before.
The snakes later dropped onto the veranda and continued their battle.